When Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone in mid-January, the president had no shortage of heavy matters to discuss with his Israeli counterpart.
A ceasefire and hostages deal appeared to be stalled. The civilian death toll in Gaza was mounting by the day. And the US was eager to help build a path to an eventual two-state solution.
But at one point in the phone call, the two leaders turned to matters of political intrigue.
Netanyahu bristled at recent media coverage citing anonymous Biden administration officials who said that the US was actively making plans for a post-Netanyahu government.
Biden swatted away the idea. He made clear that the idea was farcical – or at the very least, not worth spending precious time discussing. Netanyahu is the current leader of Israel, after all; he was the person that Biden and his top aides had been working with since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, and he was the person they would continue working with as long as the prime minister was in the job.
And both leaders flashed agreement on one thing: Blind quotes from government officials in media stories were an irritant.
The brief exchange was described to CNN by multiple sources, who said it was a blip relative to the weighty wartime issues that the pair needed to discuss. The previously unreported back-and-forth offers a window into the two men’s tenuous relationship as they each confront crises at home and growing domestic pressures, with Israel’s war in Gaza poised to play an outsized role in each of their political futures.
Biden offered a glimpse into the tensions Thursday after concluding his State of the Union speech, in which he offered a pointed message to the “leadership of Israel” that “humanitarian assistance cannot be a…
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